ABSTRACT
In light of Schon's ideas about the apprecIatlve systems through that teachers' perceive the world and that give rise to their practices, we next examine the nature and sources of teachers' appreciative systems (personal and practical theories), and the relationships between these often tacit understandings and teachers' practices. For in order to understand and direct our educational practices, we need to understand our own beliefs and understandings. So much of teaching is rooted in who we are and how we perceive the world. If a teacher is teaching in an impoverished rural or inner-city school and he or she believes that laziness is the basic cause for poverty, then it is likely that the teacher will see his or her students and their families as lazy or at least as potentially lazy. If a teacher believes that learning occurs best in situations where schedules are strict and order prevails, it is likely that he or she will require a certain degree of ordered behavior in his or her students. And if a teacher believes that the classroom should have the feeling of a "home," then it is quite probable that he or she will approach the classroom very differently than the previously mentioned teacher. It is likely that this teacher's conception of a "home" is highly dependent on his or her own upbringing, one that may be different from his or her students' conceptions. So, for these reasons, we tum our attention to teachers' beliefs and understandings and how to understand the relation between these understandings and their actual or likely practices.
